It’s not often we get to present LEGO animation! If you’re looking for a peaceful way to spend some time this afternoon, I invite you to watch Jim Wright‘s animated Ninth Symphony, composed by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Click here to experience Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
I love seafood, and crab in particular. Here in the Pacific Northwest, one of the best ways to have it is to get fresh dungeness crab and crack it yourself, so this typhoon shelter crab dish by LEGO 7, made with a fresh whole crab, feels right at home and makes me very hungry. The builder even includes some tools of the trade, useful for scavenging every last bit of tasty meat from the shell.
Fall is right around the corner, and in some places, has completely arrived and settled in. I’d wager that’s the case for this beautiful micro LEGO countryside diorama from Full Plate, with the beautiful fall foliage and the crops ready for harvest.
There’s quite a bit of detail here; the cottages are adorable and simple, and highly effective. the trees are bursting with color and you can clearly identify the different kinds. The dock into the pond is a nice touch.
Japanese builder -Grie- built this pair of LEGO musical instruments that are not only life-sized but also seem accurate down to the last curve, key, and even spit valve! I’m not sure what sounds can be made by these facsimiles, but they’re probably better than anything I could produce using the real versions.
The SWAPE (Shallow Water Assault Patrol Enforce) is a special class of boat designed for military operations in very shallow waters. While primarily operated by the US Navy and Marine Corps, it is also utilized by police departments, most notably in Florida where it is used to patrol the Everglades in search of poachers. Joshua Brooks has created this LEGO version of the Navy’s SWAPE 267, aka “Yellow Jacket”, on anti-drug patrol off the coast of the Philippines.
ZaziNombies built perhaps my favorite replica from him yet in terms of screen accuracy with his LEGO Soldier: 76’s Heavy Pulse Rifle prop from Overwatch. The V-shape of the muzzle area and the blue barrel paneling are especially outstanding when compared to source material. The build is rounded out with nice touches like a removable top-loaded ammo cartridge and a light-up, wearable tactical visor. See it all in action in the video below. If you’re not familiar with Overwatch, don’t worry; some Soldier: 76 gameplay captures are also shown.
Overwatch has been a wildly popular subject for LEGO builds lately. Check out more of the Overwatch creations we covered, including brick-built heroes, Ana Amari’s rifle, and Jesse McCree’s revolver.
Great Ball Contraptions are a mainstay of LEGO conventions, consisting of short sections of machinery which transport LEGO soccer balls from one side to another. Each builder’s machine can be connected to the next, to transport a dizzying number of balls around a display. Many builders focus on the all-important task of getting the fundamental mechanics working smoothly, but we’re seeing more and more builders take some time for the aesthetics as well. One such example is this enthralling contraption by chumuhou (楚沐猴), which has a fantastic steam-age industrial vibe. Check out the video to see it in action, too!
It’s one thing to say that a plague of locusts, cicadas, or grasshoppers has gone after your crops. It’s another thing entirely when they destroy the entire farm. sanellukovic has posted what can only be a thing of nightmares with elephant-sized grasshoppers destroying the remains of what I imagine was once a farm, full of life. Not so much anymore.
Click to see details of the carnage
September is in full swing, and with it, another lovely large ship for us to share with you. Today’s beauty comes from Brick Martil, with the Shiva Class Quark Bomber. This beautiful ship has elegant lines along with some fantastic color highlighting, with the orange. It stands out nicely.
I do like the custom stickers, which give it a nice finished feel. I like the angles in the stern of the ship, which give the whole thing a nice feel.
Built for BrickFair Virginia, this lovely diorama was displayed in full for the first time. Gary^The^Procrastinator has been working on it for some time and I must say the finished product is wonderful. Each time I look at it, I find a different detail.
Each of the buildings themselves are excellent examples of castle buildings. Seeing them all together, with minfigs throughout, brings the whole display to life.
Andreas Lenander’s destroyer, named the USS Viking, shows that good design doesn’t necessarily require fancy building techniques. It’s Andreas’s design work that caught my eye on his spacecraft, with clean slots through the red plating on the sides and top revealing a good amount of detail bits. Impressive work, especially for his first build of a spacecraft at this scale.
See more photos of the USS Viking, with shots of the building process, on Flickr.
Joining the ranks of Caravaggio, Paul Cezanne, and van Gogh, birgburg has taken a break from depicting the human (or in our case, minifig) form and instead replicated a still-life basket of fruit with his paint and canvas (ie. LEGO bricks).
The composition of the still life is superb. I especially love how the builder has stacked the LEGO cherries to resemble a flowing bunch of grapes. But what really sells this LEGO painting for me is that gorgeously-gilded, over-the-top, ostentatious frame. I’ve definitely seen this kind of frame in art museums before. Interestingly, a tour guide at the Cleveland Museum of Art once explained to me that some works of art are left in their original frames, while other works at the museum are placed in newer (although still usually ancient) frames for aesthetic reasons. Real art buffs can spot these “frame upgrades” even when the age difference between the artwork and the frame is less than 100 years based on historical frame styles alone.
For this piece though, I’d say this is a frame upgrade. But only because I know the LEGO painting was completed last year and the frame is brand new.